


everything in its right place (everything at once)

by Princex_N



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Autism, Autistic Snufkin, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Neurodiversity, Sensory Overload, Sorting and Collecting, Understanding, World's Best Moominmamma, sensory issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 16:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19009324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: When a trip to the beach ends with Snufkin on the verge of sensory overload, Moominmamma happens to have the perfect solution.





	everything in its right place (everything at once)

**Author's Note:**

> this title brought to you by: [Radiohead's 'Everything in its Right Place'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKZN115n6MI) and [Lenka's 'Everything at Once'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9tV1WGTgE), the latter being one of my favorite stimmy songs!

Snufkin can tell that he's reaching a limit that he should have already taken steps to avoid.

He knows how to take care of himself, and has been doing so for quite a long time, but there are still moments where he likes to think that he can push on a little longer without doing so. It's not as if he wants to torture himself, it's just that he's having so much fun with the others that he doesn't want to leave or interrupt just because certain things have suddenly become overwhelming. 

It starts like this: Moomin invited Snufkin along to the beach with him and the others, and Snufkin had accepted under the private stipulation that he wouldn't be getting in the water. There were plenty of other things to do on the beach anyway, and it'd be likely that he wouldn't be the only one abstaining.

Everything had been going well, and he'd been helping Snorkmaiden gather shells while the others played in the water, content to roam along the shore and pause only to return to Snorkmaiden's little camp to line up what he had found. 

Things had only gone a bit south when Little My had seen it fit to sneak up behind him and give him a mighty little shove. If he hadn't been engrossed in the activity of watching a little hermit crab burrow its way into the sand, he might have been able to stay standing, but being taken by surprise meant that he'd toppled directly into the water. 

That in and of itself wasn't an  _enormous_ issue. He'd been a little irritated, but it hadn't been as bad as it could have been, and he had been satisfied in picking his sister up and flinging her into deeper water before heading back up to the beach, followed only by her mockingly outraged cries. Snorkmaiden had fretted lightheartedly about the state of his dress, and Snufkin found a nearby piece of driftwood to lay it out on, and resolved himself to simply letting his pants and fur dry off as he sat in the sand, helping her organize. 

Which ends like this: Snufkin becoming increasingly  _aware_ of the dampness in a way he has no desire to be. 

He tells himself that it isn't a big deal, because he knows it isn't. It's only wet pants and some wet shoes, the fur on his paws has dried already - though the ends of his hair haven't quite. He's been worse off, and certainly more uncomfortable than this, but he knows that knowledge very rarely has any impact on how one feels in the moment. 

Because what he's feeling in the moment is not at all the gentle assuredness of knowing that he's been worse and still wound up fine. No, what he is feeling is the damp curl of his hair against the back of his neck, the growing crawling itch of wet fabric against his legs, the thin film of dried salt on his skin, and the heat of the grainy sand clinging to the fur on all four of his paws. Feeling the way his heart stutters uncomfortably and his breath comes a little harsher at all of the sensations, and above all else, the increasingly electric crawl of his skin has everything gets worse and worse. 

He tries very desperately to distract himself, very carefully lining up the shells that he and Snorkmaiden had gathered, first by size, then color, then however he pleases. She watches him do this with a detached sort of interest, but makes no comment or move to stop him or ask why he's doing any of it. The weight of her eyes on his paws doesn't bother him very much, so he doesn't say anything to her either, and the silence helps a little. 

But the illusion of the peace was always going to come to an end, and this one ends with Sniff's loud complaining about being hungry that eventually drives everyone to give up on the beach to head to Moominhouse for lunch. 

Snufkin knows that he could take this opportunity to go off on his own, to go hide in his tent and get free of his wet clothes once and for all, and let the unsettled energy under his skin ease out. 

On the other hand, he can feel the ache of hunger in himself as well, and knows that he doesn't have anything yet on hand that he could find quickly. If he wanted to eat, he would have to sit out and fish or head out into the forest to forage, and neither of those options seem very enticing at the moment. He also knows that  _not_ eating won't make things any easier, it might even make them worse, and so going along with the others to eat is most likely his best option, even if he doesn't particularly feel like it is. 

(Not to mention that he can see the pleased way Moomin's tail vibrates when he notices that Snufkin is still following them as they approach the porch, and that alone could convince Snufkin to stay even on his worst days.) 

He tries very hard to hold himself together at the table while they eat. He locks his legs firmly around the chair to feel the pressure of the wood against his skin, rocks in his seat, tail lashing behind him, as he nibbles uncertainly at the meal in front of him. The others seem to sense that something is off, and keep conversation with each other without forcing him to joint in. 

It's all very well and good, but the increasing urge for  _more_ keeps building up under his skin. Snufkin knows what his body wants him to do, but he knows that he  _can't_. The Moomins are so impossibly accepting, but no one could accept  _that_ behavior. Not in any way. 

(The woman at the orphanage Snufkin had spent time in as a child had  _hated_ it. Her screeching voice and grabbing paws that wouldn't  _leave him alone_ \- he hadn't cared if he was hurting himself, because it was better than all of the  _everything else_ in that too-crowded house. She had always picked him up, her paws agonizing vices around his flailing arms as she yelled too close to his oversensitive ears. Constantly building up to the day he had bitten her - in equal parts pain and terror - hard enough to break the skin. She'd practically thrown him out the front gate, and he'd never looked back. Sometimes biting people  _is_ the answer to your problems; Little My was right about that one.)

So, he tries very hard not to. He keeps his paws in his lap even though he knows he should probably continue eating, because he's too nervous to let them move. As if one wrong move could have them slamming against the sides of his head or find his teeth dug into the skin of his forearm. He knows that hurting himself is bad - appearances aside - but he needs to do  _something_ to get this feeling  _out_ before he loses control completely.

"Snufkin," he hears, and glances up to look at Moominmamma. The way everyone is looking at him tells the story of being called several times without realizing. "I was wondering if you could help me with something upstairs?" 

Snufkin's legs have pushed him away from the table and into a standing position before Snufkin has actually decided if he wants to risk it. He supposes that he might as well listen to his body in this, since he's been ignoring it so steadfastly all morning. He thinks he should answer her out loud, but is halted by the thick pressure in his mouth. He hadn't quite realized it'd gotten  _that_ bad. 

He follows her up the stairs to her sewing room, too busy trying to focus on the thud of his boots on the wooden floorboards to be curious about what she might need his help with. She doesn't touch him to try and get his attention when they stop, just finds what she's looking for and waits for him to look at her again. 

"Little My got into my buttons the other day," she explains when he finally focuses. "I think they were playing a game, and the whole box got knocked over." She opens the lid to show him a disorganized mass of buttons. "She  _did_ clean them all up, but didn't sort them properly again. Do you think you'd mind too much to try doing it yourself? I'd offer to stay up here and help, but I need to go back down and clean the kitchen." 

Snufkin nods almost frantically. Not only is he more than happy to help - even stressed as he is - but the idea of being left alone up here, very far away from the noise and presence of the others - sounds more than wonderful right now. 

"Oh, good," Moominmamma says, a little more pleased than Snufkin would have expected. She hands him the tin of buttons, and then finds a square of scrap fabric to lay on the floor so that he can sort them out without losing any in the gaps of the floorboards. 

"I'll tell the others they can go back out without you, if you'd like." Snufkin nods in response, already poking through the buttons, and she hums in acknowledgement without sounding annoyed or disappointed with his 'antisocial' behavior. "Feel free to lock the door behind me, once I'm gone. I'll be telling the others, of course, but you never know with some of the people in this house." 

Her tone is light, but the implications of what she's saying finally hits, and Snufkin realizes that this was most likely entirely engineered to help give him a break from the others. He'd wonder how she'd known, but it's  _Moominmamma_ , who always seems to just pick up on these things. He tries to figure out what he feels at the realization, if he's annoyed or embarrassed by being known, but finds that he's only grateful at being understood. He still can't speak to her, but he nods at her gratefully and hopes that she'll pick up on the rest. 

The smile she gives him makes him think that she has.

As soon as the door has shut, he stands and goes over to lock it, and feels a little more settled at the privacy (even if sometimes locked doors are more of a plea than a real barrier, since Little My is quite the skilled lockpick).

He stops and considers the freedom of this privacy, and decides to strip off his damp pants and shirt, leaving him in his still-dry undergarments, and goes to hang them over a chair in the corner to finish drying. After a moment of deliberation, he goes ahead and takes off his socks as well. The biting urge to  _hurt_ has already begun to fade at their removal, and he settles on the floor next to the fabric to dump out the buttons and get to work.  

He hadn't though to ask how Moominmamma would have liked them sorted, but supposes that color is the safest bet. The buttons on his own clothes are all quite mismatched - replaced by whatever he could find the quickest after one was lost - but he knows that Moominmamma tends more towards caring how things look when she makes them. 

It's easy to fall into a rhythm as he sorts, plucking buttons at random from the pile and shifting to put it in its place, occasionally pausing to reposition everything when a new color is found. He sways as he sits, the tip of his tail twitching contentedly, and rocks forward onto his front paws every once in a while to reach for a further pile. 

He likes the neat lines of the buttons as he places them, sorting and resorting with the inclusion of varying sizes and shapes. He knows that all of this isn't strictly necessary for the buttons to be sorted the way Moominmamma needs them to be, but it's calming and he enjoys it, and is sure that she'd known what to expect when she'd given him the task in the first place. 

Looking at the sets as he finishes, he's almost unwilling to put everything back into their containers. Although, as nice as it would be to leave them there, he knows where they belong (and that they wouldn't last very long in their current positions anyway). Despite knowing this, he still takes as much time as possible to put everything away, comforted slightly by the pleasant appearance of everything going back in its right place. 

Only after this task is complete does Snufkin think to glance towards the window, and is surprised to see that the sun has already begun to hang low in the sky, casting golden rays of light onto the floor. His clothes are long dried (though still slightly stiff from the salt), and he pulls them back on, happy when they settle against his skin with their usual weight and comfort. He refolds the fabric Moominmamma had laid out for him, and leaves it next to the closed tin of buttons on her table before heading back downstairs, surprised at his own reluctance to leave the soft warmth of the room. 

The house is still quiet as he makes his way through, and he finds Moominmamma setting the table, seeming to debate whether or not to place the sixth plate down. 

"Snufkin, it's good to see you again," she says when she notices him, keeping the plate in her paws as she straightens. "Did you manage to get the buttons sorted?" 

He nods, and adds on a hesitant, "Thank you," his voice quiet, but functional. 

"Oh, of course, dear. I'm glad I could help," she tells him, voice warm and smile warmer. She holds the plate in her paws up a little higher, "You didn't eat very much of your lunch; I was wondering if you planned to stay for dinner?" 

He knows that she would let him go without hesitation if he told her he wasn't, but he's learned from Moomin that the small lilt to the end of the question means she's  _hoping_ he'll agree (she and Moomin really are so much alike sometimes). Snufkin would expect to be restless, after having spent all day indoors, but isn't at all, and it doesn't feel like a lie or a stretch when he tells her, "Yes, please." 

When she beams at him happily and finally sets down the plate, it makes Snufkin think of the satisfaction of the sorted buttons, and the pleased stomp of his heel against the tile feels just as fitting. 

**Author's Note:**

> a bit of a vent that turned into a long-winded introspection on my obsession with collecting and sorting, with the added bonus of [This Tumblr Post](https://m5ss.tumblr.com/post/184635580766/button-collection-incase-you-havent-noticed) that has made me seriously consider starting a button collection 
> 
> come say hi at [my tumblr!](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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